Nigeria’s agric products now have ready markets -SON

Nigerian agricultural and allied products now have a major boost in regional and international markets following a recent harmonization of standards exercise carried out by the Africa Regional Organisation for Standardisation (ARSO).

The harmonisation exercise is coming against the background of strident calls to make the continent’s agricultural sector competitive at the global market level.

The Ag. Director-General of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Dr. Paul Angya also a member of ARSO, provided an update on the latest development, said the next step was for the nation is to prioritise its agricultural sector by making standards available for that sector.

This, he said, would prepare Nigerian agricultural products to meeting the standards stipulated by the association.

Angya who spoke in the course of the ARSO General Assembly said Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) must realise the importance of standards application to their businesses, saying that the sector also has a vital role to play in ensuring that the nation’s non-oil exports are exportable.

The SON boss informed that Nigerian had been applauded for its role in the development the ARSO, adding that the nation’s contributions were in the areas of technical work and policy administration.

“Our agricultural and allied products now have a ready market in Africa. So it is for us to go back and renew our energy in those priority sectors and teach our people the critical relevant sectors and the availability of these agricultural standards.

“It is also to teach them how to apply them to improve production in order to meet the ready and available market that ARSO has created for us,” he said.

Speaking further Angya saids, “SMEs must realise the importance of standards’ application to their own personal enterprises, the capacity of standards to improve their productivity and their profits. We have embarked on massive sensitisation and education, we have also engaged in training the SMEs. We have trained them in standards application, management systems and they have realised that application of these standards will improve their overall profit margin that is why they are coming in groups to join the band wagon of SON. We have also discussed with the ACP-TBT institutions about supporting Shea butter producers in Nigeria and when we go back home, we are going to inform them about the approval of the ACP-TBT project to impact immediately in Shea butter production.”

He said it is rather a coincidence that agriculture and agricultural products have dominated the main theme of standardization for this year at the ARSO General Assembly and also the issue of women empowerment using standards and standardisation, stressing that Nigeria is looking at diversifying the economy by improving non-oil products for export and agriculture.

“We have already designed and initiated a project to propagate agriculture standards and to focus mainly on agricultural practices by applying standards in Nigeria so that they can contribute as a sector in the economic development of the country. We have also identified women and children as essential factor in propagating standardization and developing the economy and you know that there are more women involved in agriculture and agricultural practices than men,” he said.

He noted that Nigeria was predominantly an agrarian society, adding that what was happening at the continental level, simply resonates and flows with what SON was doing in Nigeria.

“It is going to be easier for agricultural products in Nigeria to access the African continental trade because most of the standards are already harmonized here, so we will simply take these standards and use them in Nigeria and when the products are finished, they would have been manufactured and produced to the standards requirement in all of Africa. So the technical barriers that usually exist in trading across intra-continental trade, would have already been eliminated even before we go to the market,” he said.

He said the way forward was to continually improve on standards, pointing out that there was a renewed interest in the work of ARSO globally, where almost every international donors and development agencies were supporting standards’ harmonisation.

Also speaking at the event, an expert on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) of the ACP TBT programme of the European Union, Mrs. Idinakide Eva, said the programme was not for only women development but for overall development and facilitation of trade, noting that the programme had three different dimensions which include supporting quality infrastructure, supporting the private sector and disseminating information to support the development of relevant data uploading on the website of ARSO

According to her, “We are now completing most of the project tenders and all the activities have to be finalized by January 2017. And in terms of the project cycle, it is not really much time, but we hope we will be able to help Shea butter producers in Nigeria with specific support of the programme and hopefully there will be other projects coming up.”

She said to penetrate the EU market is not easy because exporters have to face quite a lot of competition, but that the focus of producers should be not just meeting the standards but giving something extra, such as taking cognizance of the voluntary certification schemes that have been developed by many countries.

“Taking a look at the scheme means that we are not just complying with the standards that provide the minimum requirements, but we should ensure that this product is not just a commodity but a special product that has unique qualities, also from specific skills on how you produce this product indigenously and the likes. The use of the voluntary schemes for quality and promotion of quality, promotion of products coming from specific geographical regions is a solution to penetrate the EU market,” the expert added.

The Chairman, Senate Committee on Industries, Ebonyi North, Senator. Sam Egwu, said as a parliamentarian, he has been better informed about the activities of SON, urging Nigerians to constantly adhere to standards in their everyday lives.

He said the senate had recently approved a bill to make it mandatory for all government procurements to be locally sourced in order to conserve the nation’s hard-earned foreign exchange and boost locally made products.

According to him, there is need to understand the importance of SON as it obtains in other parts of the world.